Left Behind: CPTN's Story
by gasha1995
Summary: For every hero and villain there are those they left behind, and for Ruby and her friends it is no different. From Signal, to Atlas, to Haven and Vale- there are old friends and enemies hiding everywhere. The question is, how can the people left behind cope without their heroes and villains and what will they do now they're all alone to fend for themselves?


**Left Behind: C.P.T.N.'s Story**

 _For every hero and villain there's someone they've left behind_

 **Chapter One: Send Me A Signal**

"So there we were, thousands of Grimm swarming around us, the streets filled with screams of panic, the badass music accentuating every action we took. Death stared us right in the face with jaws as huge, as huge as the Beacon tower. Yeah, that's right. We were done. We were done in. No way we could survive, right? There's nothing we could do. We were no match for the Grimm. And then what'd you think happened? Go on, what do you think?"

The two girls listening held their breath and one of them whispered, "What? Did you defeat all of them?"

The boy telling the story folded his arms and looked at them smugly. He leaned in closer towards them. "Well, let me tell you, those Grimm regretted breaking into the town that day." He winked and the girls looked at him with more awe than they had been before. He didn't think that was possible but apparently, it was.

Books crashed down onto the table, making Tao jump up onto his feet, slashing his open hands through the air as if an invisible assailant were attacking him.

Polly, his step-sister, wiped her brow as sweat trickled down from her forehead to her eyelids. "Next time you can carry your own books," she said.

Tao smirked at her and patted her on the back. "Oh, they're not my books."

"Yes, they are. I got that list you left in my locker."

"Oh, yeah, I know about the list. It was a list of your books, that you need for class."

Polly took a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and opened it. The words were faded and she had to squint to read a few of them because of Tao's almost bird-like-scratches, but, he was right, she'd never seen any of the names before in her life.

"You keep forgetting to bring them. I thought I'd help you out, and the only way to do that is to make you feel like you're helping me out."

Polly checked Tao's face to see if he was making fun of her but he remained as sincere as he always was with her. He smiled at her and then sat down, trying to make it as awesome a sit down as he could (though he ended up looking like more of a fool than anything else). He winked at the patiently awaiting girls sitting across from him on the dining room table. "Now, where was I?"

"Oh, oh, you were just going to tell us about the way you took down all of those Grimm that attacked the city."

"I still can't believe it. If only we'd been here to see it."

"I'm sorry, what attack?" Polly asked as she slid down into the seat next to her brother. She was trying to collect all the books together since she'd dropped them so heavily that they'd rolled off to here, there and everywhere. She was still trying to find a book of fairy tales from the list when the other girls were answering.

"Your brother was just telling us about how you both helped to save the day when the Grimm attacked Vale—you know, when that train crashed through those old tunnels," Crimson told them. Crimson was fairly new at the Academy so Polly hadn't had the chance to get to know her as well as she knew Crimson's friend and cohort, Amber. She knew, though, that both girls were admirers of any act of heroism and were usually unfortunately absent when any chance to be a hero came up, something that they regretted every single time. Maybe it's because of this that they were so gullible to the rumours and stories that spread around the school, many of them started by Tao.

"Sorry, we did what?"

Amber heard the tone in Polly's voice and recognized it. She'd heard it quite a few times by now. "You didn't do that, did you?"

"Not that I remember, sorry." And when Polly said she was sorry, she meant it. The disappointment on Crimson's face was almost unbearable. She didn't know whether it was just the girl's innocent eyes or the fact she was part mouse that made her so sweet and loving. Polly searched for something to say to make them both feel better but couldn't. She was a blunt and honest person and that was a hard habit to break. Thankfully the very person she needed was just walking up to them with his tray of fresh lunch-lady slop.

"Copper, thank Grimm," she said, practically pulling her friend onto the seat. The tray he was carrying crashed down but he just managed to catch it in time so that he didn't lose anything. Copper hated losing food; whether it was good food or not didn't matter.

"Whoa, why am I so popular all of a sudden?"

"I've been telling stories again, Copper," Tao said, grinning. "You know that the girls don't like it when I do that."

Polly glared at her brother and rolled her eyes. How come he could be sensible talking to her and yet he treated everybody else like they were a punchline to a good joke?

"Oh, and what story has he been telling this time?" Copper said, directly to Crimson and Amber.

"You really didn't fight the Grimm from the train tunnels?" Crimson squeaked in her mousey voice.

"Well—no," Copper said, sticking a straw into his drink carton. "We haven't even won a video game since we were twelve. But that's okay, we've got time. All of us have got time to learn. And hey," Copper lifted a spoonful of slop towards his mouth, "look at it this way, even if Tao's story's just a fairy tale, one day any one of us could make it come true. Though probably not me."

"It's just it—it sounded so real this time. Tao's never made it sound so real before," Amber said, rubbing her hands through the curves of the wood on her seat.

Tao, Polly and Copper all looked at each other, each one knowing what the other one was thinking. As for telling Amber and Crimson what that thought was, they wouldn't even dare. Even Tao prepared to keep his sources a mystery when it came to this particular storyteller.

"Come on, everyone, let's eat up and then I'll bring in a real meal for tomorrow," Copper promised, tucking into his meal before the bell for next class. He was happy to see that this promise had the desired effect and in only fifteen minutes they were all pleasantly full, organised and on the way to their next lesson.

Signal Academy wasn't the biggest school in the world and couldn't even claim to have the best students in Vale but it was one of the most diverse places to study in any of the four kingdoms. And it wasn't necessarily the diversity that made the school Copper's favourite place in the world, it was the freedom you had to be yourself within the walls. When Copper had first come to the school he'd been terrified that somebody like him, with a background as lowly as his, would be whittled out before he'd even had a chance to change himself to fit the perfect model of a Signal student. Luckily for him there was no more perfect model than being who he was in the eyes of the headmistress, and to most of the teachers and professors he was an upstanding young man with a destiny, they believed, would be greater than he'd ever be able to see coming.

But, even still, even though this was the first thing he'd been told on arrival at the Academy, he was all ready and prepared to run away and never come back. He wasn't a Huntsman, he never would be, and he couldn't handle all the pressure being put on him from all sides. It was his friends that kept him there. Not Tao and Polly. No, he didn't meet them until he was nearly a year into his studies. It was her. The one they hadn't talked about in public since the letters had stopped coming a few months ago.

Copper had their last correspondence in his hand now. He'd read it so many times in the last few weeks, he'd become borderline obsessed with deciphering its contents—contents that, knowing Ruby, just weren't there. She was never a very cryptic person.

But still—Write When I Can—what did that mean? Was she in some kind of trouble? Was that her way of telling them to come and help her out? He didn't know how useful they could be. Ruby was the best fighter by far out of all of them. She'd even got accepted to Beacon, to become a Huntress like she'd always dreamed, two years ahead of them. If she couldn't handle whatever was going on, how could they?

There'd been times were Copper had almost gone crazy with worry. He'd woken up in panic, sweat dripping down his face, grasping his bedsheets as if he were fighting a Grimm to save his life. It was a nightmare he couldn't awake from. He'd packed and unpacked his bags over and over again, planning trip after trip to Beacon to go and see for himself if there was anything he could do for her.

Their friendship had been a close one, though Copper had always known that it was a bit one-sided. Ruby was Ruby. She had her head wrapped firmly around the idea of being a huntress and she'd do anything to get to the standard she needed to be. She was at Signal because it would help her to reach her goals, whereas he was only there for her, Tao and Polly. If he hadn't met Ruby he would never have stayed and he knew it, but Ruby would still be Ruby. Ruby would've still gone on to do the amazing things she was already doing. She didn't need him the way he needed her, and as much as he hated to admit it he was too proud to tell her that.

"Write when I can? What does that mean?" he asked himself for the fifty-seventh time in the last two weeks. "Ruby, what are you up to?" The stars outside of his window blinked and he turned to look at them. The stars in Vale were so much different than the ones he'd been used to in Atlas. They were bigger somehow, brighter. "Are you okay, Hood? Can you just let me know, okay? If you're listening, just let me know. That's all I need, then I'll leave you alone. I promise."

There was a loud thump outside of his door. The housekeeper must've dropped something again, he thought. She was a pretty clumsy woman at the best of times but since the Grimm attack a month or so back she'd been shaking so much that she'd been dropping things constantly. Copper felt sorry for her. She'd been shopping when one of the monsters had come knocking at the store's door. The poor woman was lucky to survive—lucky and extremely thankful to the young Huntress who'd stepped in to save her. Emerald, he thought she'd said.

Ruby knew Emerald, he figured. They were probably friends, especially if Emerald's weapon was as amazing as the housekeeper had seemed to suggest. Ruby cared more for weapons then people.

The stars blinked again. Copper blinked back, wondering what Tao and Polly would be up to now. It was pretty late so Tao was probably asleep. Polly might be awake, but she was probably busy watching or playing something on her scroll. She liked to be doing things at night, to keep her mind off of her worries. She had plenty of them, he knew.

In fact, Copper thought, maybe Polly had the right idea there. He opened his drawer and pulled out his pet project. If he couldn't sleep, then maybe he could build. If it worked for others, it should be able to work for him. He took one last look at the rickety tree outside of his window, said goodnight to the raven watching him in the moonlight, shut the curtains and set to work.


End file.
